To Live and Love Fully with Anne Ferrier Crook

trigger warning, the Resilience Project provides an open space for people to share their personal experiences. Some content in this podcast may include topics that you may find difficult, the listeners discretion is advised.

Hello friends, welcome to radical resilience, a weekly show where I learn Kaplan Venables have inspirational conversations with people who have survived life's most challenging times. We all have the ability to be resilient and bounce forward from a difficult experience. And these conversations prove just that get ready to dive into these life changing moments while strengthening your resilience muscle and getting raw and real.

Well, hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of radical resilience. It is more Blair Kaplan Venables and I'm here with my friend and you know what I can't even remember and how we met but we've been in each other's worlds for like, at least what four or five years like I don't know. How did we meet? Yeah, I

Yeah I think we met through Melissa Deally. Okay. red ruby team. Yes. And in your group?

Yes, yes. Well, okay, that's it. It's all coming together because I was like, oh, yeah, Melissa knows you anyways. I love it. So Anne farrier Crook is a certified Integrative Health Coach aagp Holding space consultant, birth doula and certified medical interpreter CMI Spanish. What's that? What's the CMI Spanish

Certified medical interpreter in Spanish?

Oh bleh. I was like, I don't actually know Spanish. I love that. But she's worked in many facets of healthcare for the past 23 years. And regards to holding space for life's sacred thresholds. You know, she works in that space of health care, but she's been on the other end. And we're here to talk about her journey. And April 2018, she was diagnosed with stage one breast cancer. And then July 2022, she was diagnosed with stage one B melanoma. And so she created this growth mindset and an empowered her to shift from surviving, both health scares to fully thriving, I like to call it through revival, it's like from surviving to thriving, thriving. Anyways, I'm so excited to have you here. So an was in the first global Resilience Project book. And so we have our story on our website, or social media or book and now we have her on the on the podcast. It's like we have an everywhere. And I just had the privilege of meeting her in person for the first time because I was in Nashville, filming my segment for my story, which is going to be on Amazon Prime video. But I am just so excited for you to be here. And so welcome to the microphone. Welcome to the pod.

I am so delighted to be here, Blair. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

And like for everything you've gone through, you're such a beam of light.

Thank you. Well, I've learned I've learned a thing or two about resilience, I guess you could say. Let's

talk about it. Let's let's let's tell me your story,

huh? Well, I guess I'll focus on the two cancer scares, because that's what you shared. And that's where we'll start. And, you know, I like to say that the second cancer scare, which was in July of 2022, when my life was actually thriving. And it was sort of like, Whoa, where did that come from? It was just a mole that I found underneath my left breast and I scratched it one evening and it was just like that feels a little funny and I just had the wherewithal to go get it checked out. And when I found out three weeks later, holy cow, it's an invasive melanoma. Thanks be to God, I caught it early, it was only a stage one B it did not require any treatment other than surgery and some physical therapy. It really gave me an opportunity. I like to say when the rubber meets the road where everything I learned from stage one breast cancer back in 2018. I was able to apply firsthand. And it's stuff that I've been sharing with my health coaching clients you know about being in a growth mindset and choosing faith over fear and knowing that there's, you know, a higher power that truly has your back. But here I was like reliving the whole cancer scare and saying okay, now this is an opportunity for me to embody what I'm sharing with the world. And really, really like anchor in even deeper to this growth mindset that I live from.

Yeah, that's, that's quite remarkable that you have this like, Outlook on it. You know, let's go back to your first diagnosis. So April 2018, when you were diagnosed with stage one breast cancer, how How did you like, walk us through that process? Like, why did you how did you get diagnosed? Why did you seek medical attention? Walk us through that before, during, and then your process to heal?

Well, um, you know, I like to say that the stage one breast cancer I had in April 2018, which is my birthday month, by the way, so I have April now, April 3 is my birthday, April 13, is my cancer Versary. And that was really, that's, that whole experience just kind of shook me at the core. You know, because if you've never experienced cancer, there's before cancer, and there's after cancer, but it's a life altering experience, your life is never the same. When you're facing your own mortality. And you don't know what you're dealing with. Until you, you know, you get the pathology report back. So there's that whole waiting period of like, not knowing what you're dealing with. And that was a very emotional experience for me, I knew in my heart of heart that this is not just about hormones, or not just about genetics, as they say, or, you know, stress are some of the other things that can trigger trigger cancer epigenetically. I knew for me there was an emotional healing component that had to be addressed. Wow. Yeah. And so I, I really did a deep dive back into figuring out what that emotional healing piece was for me and went and did some really profound inner child work. I don't know if you're familiar with aces adverse childhood events. Yeah,

let's do it. Let's, let's, let's do a sidebar. Let's talk about ACEs. And let's talk about your inner child where,

yeah, I mean, I so I've been working in healthcare for 23 years. So I know very well about ACEs and stuff. But looking back on my own life, I realized like everybody thinks of PTSD as like, war veterans, but PTSD is a chronic, pervasive issue that many of us are dealing with from other parts of our lives. And childhood can be part of that. So I, you know, looked back at the ACE study and realized I had some aces there. And I had already done like some therapeutic work in my life healing work, it wasn't like I was new to this inner child work. But I think the breast cancer, especially where it was located, it was on the left side, underneath my heart, near the ribs. And I was like, this is just the the location is just too coincidental not to look at, you know, maybe some unresolved anger, some unresolved grief, some unresolved pain that I had been holding on to it's so easy to just push forward. And my old way, I was like, just, you know, conquer that mountain. And I realized that my new type of courage, my new type of resilience was going to be more of like a softer sort of grace and strength of allowing those painful emotions to come up to surface and feeling them and releasing them, and letting go.

Do you think doing that deep inner child work helped you heal from cancer? Like from breast cancer?

Oh, my gosh, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm actually featured in a global Docu series called The missing link that's going all over the world on March 14 This month, and the missing link is unresolved emotional trauma, and chronic stress. And so a lot of research is starting to show that when we don't go back and attend to those emotional wounds, it creates dis ease in the body. Not just cancer, but a lot of chronic disease. And so I just intuitively knew that but what affirms my own knowing is now I'm hearing the medical experts saying the same thing. And so I would say that the number one part of my journey has been the emotional healing piece and building great resilience from that.

I love that and thank you for sharing. So your, your melanoma Do you think that had to do with an emotional connection?

I really don't feel like melanoma was an emotional connection to be honest, because fast forward to July 2022, like I really moved into a thriving place like I was in a survival mode back in 2018, where it was sort of like my dark night of the soul when I went through the breast cancer experience but I shifted into like I emerged on the other side of that is a better version of an and just thriving again and just in full joy from that. And so I think that for me, melanoma was like a little tap on the shoulder of saying, Okay, now we're gonna like, throw you another curveball and see how you embody and practice everything you're sharing with the world and, and not just say, Oh, I learned this but now you have an opportunity to like live it and embody it from another cancer scare.

So Wow. Profound, that's just okay. So people are listening to this. And some of us may relate to the childhood trauma. I think one let what can you explain what ACES is?

Yeah, so the ACE, the ACE study means adverse childhood experiences. And so if you go back, if you Google it, you can research it. And apparently, considering how many ACE scores you have, like, you know, it can be up to like, I think six or seven. Um, a lot of people have around three or four. But the more aces you have in your life, the more likely you are epigenetically, to turn on the genes of disease, and adult, if those childhood wounds are not tended to like, and I don't think any of us escape emotional trauma in some form in our life, but it's what we do with it. And so that's what I love to why I love talking about post traumatic growth and living from a growth mindset. Because when we come from that perspective, we can like turn it into gold.

Yes. Okay. So people are listening. And some people may have never heard of aces. I only heard about it recently, my sister's a therapist. So like, I slowly uncover things. I'm like, Oh, that makes so much sense. Doing all the self diagnosis. But I'm, like, I'm someone who have has a lot of trauma from my childhood. And if you're listening to this, and you look up the aces, and you realize that you, you know, are a candidate for like, dis ease. What's your recommendation to these people? Like? Like, how can they start healing that inner childhood wounds, or that PTSD so that they don't manifest or their body does not, like activate the cancer cells?

Good question. And by all means, I don't want to scare people to say, Oh, if you have like, emotional lands, you're gonna develop some disease, you know, that's not always the case, because we all have different genes. And when I talk about epigenetics, what that basically means is our gene, if you imagine that, like your genes are the predisposing factor, but your diet and lifestyle would be the trigger. So like, if you've got those predisposing factors of emotional trauma, but you're living a healthy lifestyle, you're cleaning up that unfinished business in your life, those genes never express. So we have a lot more power than we. Um, and so, you know, for me, personally, I'll just speak, what's worked well, for me personally, is I realize that going somatically into the body is where the deepest healing lies. So I did a lot of different types of trauma therapies, like I did EMDR, and I did brain spotting. I've done some cranial sacral, therapy, some acupuncture. It's all about finding what works for you. And now when I work with my own health coaching clients, I do what's called a holding space session. And I support my clients in compassionate presence to turn towards those parts of us that still live in our body and develop rapport with it. And so, you know, instead of pushing those emotions down, let's say you're feeling like afraid, or you're feeling grief, instead of pushing it down and be like, Oh, I can't feel this way. It's turning towards it with curiosity, and start starting to trust your body and know that, like, there's an inner healer that lives inside of you. And we really are our own inner healer. That's what I believe.

Yeah. And like, it's like, some things are out of our control. And some things are in our control. So like, what are you doing to heal? Right? Are you sitting there being an ER wallowing in what is? Or are you making the decisions to or the moves to move through it and to heal? And I love that you just said that, like, we all have the ability to work on our own healing. And I think a lot of people get stuck because they're in like a depressive cycle where they just feel like they can't do anything, or they don't know where to start, like, from your experience, like, how can someone start? Like, yeah, how could someone start healing themselves if they especially if this is completely new to them? Like, they're like, whoa, what does this even mean? Like, this is a little too woowoo. But I'm willing to try it like what is like, what's your recommendation?

And that's a great place to start because I first want to honor and acknowledge the overwhelm that because I've been there, I was there back in 2018, where it's just like, I'm feeling overwhelmed about getting through the next hour, you know. And so I think the first place to start is just to have full compassion and acceptance for wherever you are on your journey of resilience and healing. And just breaking it down to one step at a time. And then really figuring out what are those Um, resilient tools and your own toolkit that kind of resonate for you, that you can start turning towards, because I just mentioned a lot of things I did, but that might not fit for everyone, right? I know one thing that simple and it doesn't cost a lot of money. It's just to go out in nature and to walk in the forest. Yes. You know, something as simple as just taking a walk in the forest. It has actually, there's research done that it boosts your immunity, it boosts your mood. It's amazing for you like five spades.

Yes. Like I actually talked about the five secrets to strengthening your resilience muscle. And one of my secrets as far as bathing, getting outside, going for a walk, especially in nature, because of the scientific proof of it, helping your immunity. And I just love that you brought that up. Because that doesn't cost money.

No, I mean, there's so many things we can do that doesn't cost money. Another thing I've learned, it's worked wonders, for me is breath work, you know, just just going into your breath. And because so many of us breathe from the chest up, and we're living in our head from the neck up all day. And we're not really even like, embodied into our, what's going on. And, and so just focusing more on deep, abdominal intentional breathing can really bring me back into feeling grounded.

I love that. So good. This is so important. Because I think like, a lot of people think, oh, like when they get sick, like, cancer happened to me, like, what did I do to deserve this, and they wallow in it. And I think with you coming at it with such like not a positive perspective, but like, there are things we can do, we don't just need to sit there and wait for medical intervention, like there are things that we can also do alongside whatever our choice of medical intervention may be. You know, what's something we didn't really talk about is like, I want to know what your definition of growth mindset is like, what is a growth mindset?

I love that you asked me that question. Because, you know, when adversity strikes, which at some point in our lives, it strikes all of us. I like to talk about the difference from a fixed mindset, which is more like why did this happen to me and kind of wallowing which is, you know, it's natural to feel that way on days. Let's be honest, like when we're going through hard times, it's natural to feel that way on dates. But the key is to find ways to shift out of that, like maybe going for a walk in the forest, like we just talked about something that can shift your mind and say, How can I turn this around, and see it as an opportunity that actually helps me create a new story and find a perspective that feels empowering and courageous. And like, Oh, my God, like, you know, I've got this. And I'm going to turn this into gold, no matter how bad this sucks in the moment, I'm going to turn this into rocket fuel for my growth for my personal growth. And it's not just something that we can do around our health, but we can do it around heartbreak, we can do it around somebody dying that we love, we can do it around really anything in our life. But the key is to see like, the value in the adversity that we go through.

Yes, the value in the adversity, we go through growth mindset. Now I have a personal question. Now that you've had cancer twice, are you scared? Or do you think about having cancer a third time?

You know, I really don't think about that Blair. And the reason being, is, I think I learned from the first go round What fear feels like, when you go through cancer, I was there, I was immersed in fear back in 2018. But then when I came out on the other side, and I realized, I'm going to be okay, started feeling my joy again, I realized that by me staying in my joy, that keeps me in a healing state that my body is not in fight flight. My body is in a healing state. So when I got the stage when the melanoma scare in July, I was in my joy. I realized, oh, okay, I'm not going to let this disarm me. I'm going to stay in my joy and my happy place. I'm going to keep rocking my mission with my purpose. And everything turned out to be okay. And I think the message I got the second time around is there is a higher power that has your back and and it is telling you loud and clear. And I really was listening. I said okay, I get it, I get it. And so I know going forward that yes, there could always be another scare but what's going to be the purpose of me staying in fear mode about that, like all that does is cortisol and stress hormones.

So, like,

my bed, stay calm and grounded and happy

and use your breath work. But what I love about that is like, the underlying messages that like what you think like what you think the words you say they all matter. And you know choosing to be in the growth mindset and not think about that you're living your best life and not living in the state of what if. Right? And I don't know Do you believe in manifestation? I do. Okay, so it's interesting like I I've never been diagnosed with cancer unfortunately my mum and dad, my mum and dad both died with cancer from cancer. But my experience is I started the this project, the global Resilience Project started off as called the I am resilient project. I don't know if you remember that. But it was called I Am resilient. And I believe in manifestation, but I didn't think about because I just kept saying I'm resilient. I'm resilient. And that's how the name came to be. And my husband does not really believe in manifestation, but after like, the miscarriage and my grandpa dying, and his dad dying, and my mom dying, he's like, I think you need to change the name of your project or quit. Because you're bringing a lot of hard stuff into our life. And I was like, yeah, no. And then like, we ended up changing the name to the global Resilience Project. Because it wasn't so me focus. It wasn't like I am resilient, but it was more like we are resilient, like the global Resilience Project, not like Blair's resilient, keep giving me shit. So I can show you how resilient I am. And like, that's kind of like I know, words matter. But like, that was a really big shift. Yes. And I just I am proud to say like, I've officially been, it's been over a year, and no one has died, which is like a record. Like you but you know, like it just like it just works cohesively with what you're saying is like your mindset matters, the words you say matter. And, you know, there is like living in joy or living in fear. And you may have someone out there listening may have never had cancer, but they live in fear of it. Mm hmm,

exactly. And words matter. But mindset. My goodness, our beliefs and our mindset are so powerful.

Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I want to talk a bit about what is the breast connection?

Ah, I love that you asked this question. So this is actually a global health community, that a wellness community that I co founded with three other amazing women ones from British Columbia, Erin, and Dina and Lisa, who have also gone through breast cancer and the foot and Aaron has worked on top surgeries with women who've had mastectomy, and she's very passionate about serving that population. But this is a community for everyone. It's not just for people who've gone through breast cancer, it's to bring greater well awareness to not only our breast health, because a lot of people don't even like really start focusing on that until something has happened. But also, it's, it's about really coming together to build the healing power of community. It's about learning about self care, self love. So we have a lot of people in the community that have not gone through breast cancer, and we have some that have, but we just decided the breast, the breast connection, because it's so close to the heart. And so it really is a heartfelt mission. It's about lifting people up. It's about letting people tell their stories, like the global Resilience Project, and coming together and letting our stories be celebrated.

Yes, well, like obviously, I love that. I mean, I don't love that you had breast cancer, but I love that you know, celebrating these stories. We all have a story and you know, if you're listening to this and it resonates and you're you know, you're someone who has, like lives with or has survived, or has been diagnosed recently with breast cancer, like connect with and and how can people connect with you? How can people find you? How can people learn about the breast connection?

Thank you for that. So the best place to connect with me is on my website, and I also have a landing page for the breast connection there. My website is integrative radiance, and I like to say I ve not integrated but integrative radiance.com. I'm also on LinkedIn under and farrier, crook. And my email address is actually on my website. So that's a great way to connect with me.

Amazing and all of her links her full bio, which I didn't read anything because she's phenomenal. And it's a big bio. It's all in the show notes. So like if you're driving, pull over, take a look or make a note to check when you get home. I want to wrap this up with a piece of advice. You have now been diagnosed with cancer twice and both experiences were different. The first one was in fear. Like you had that experience and then the second one you were living in a place of joy. What is your experience? You're inside. That's not what I meant, what is your advice versus someone who's maybe listening to this, or who in the future might get diagnosed with cancer for the first time,

I would say the first thing to do is stop and take a deep breath. Because cancer didn't just happen overnight, you know it, it's something that has slowly been happening in the body. And it's not something to fight against. Because our body created it. So it's when you can build a report as cancer being a guru or a mentor, like, what is it here to teach me and then you, you work with your body, and you put your body in a healing state. And then you build community, you find the right people on your healthcare team, you find people that you resonate with, because if you're with a doctor, and they have a whole plan, that doesn't resonate with who you are in your body, mind, spirit, that's not going to be a good match. So really, trust yourself and trust your intuition. That that's another thing that's really important is that you know, the right steps. And if you tune into your body, and you listen, it will show you the path you need to take.

I love that. You know, I think what you said about stop and take a deep breath. It's important because immediately like, I would imagine, like people go into panic mode, and their mind starts to race and they can't get a clear thought. So I like that when you take a breath and like a deep breath, not like the chest up, but like a deep breath, breathe into it. That's such good advice. And and you know, if someone's listening to this, and that, you know, and you feel like ads words resonate, or you have questions reach out to her, like she she is here, you know, check out her story in the first global Resilience Project book. And thank you so much for sharing your story. Now here with us on this podcast. It has obviously changed and morphed a bit since you know, the published book. And, you know, I am just grateful for you to be in our like my life, but also like in the community in the global resilience community, you're doing some really important work. So thank you so much for coming on radical resilience.

I'm so grateful to be in this project. And this community Blair, thank you for this opportunity. And if anybody feels inspired to reach out and connect, I'd love to hear from you.

Amazing. Connect with her. So and thank you to all of you for listening to another episode of radical resilience. We're plugged into your ears, we've been in your mind for the last 2030 or so minutes, depending how fast you listen to this episode, or how slow you listen to this episode. But you know what, we wouldn't be here without you. We've been doing this podcast for over a year, we published our first book in June of 2022 became an international best seller. And we've just opened up applications for book number two, if you have a story you want to share of overcoming a challenge, we invite you to go to the global resilience project.com. So you can share your story with us you can apply and you can be part of this community, you can be a tool that will help other people heal. And sharing your story helps people heal helps you heal. So if you want to be involved, check it out. We can hop on a call. Yes, that's right, me and you can have a little call 15 minutes, talk about it if it's the right fit for you, you know and was in it. And I'm so grateful for her being in the first book and believing in the cause because it was just an idea to honor my father's legacy. And here we are a global movement. So you know what, and I just want to remind you all it is okay to not be okay, like we have hard times we have good times and every time in between. And sometimes when life is super hard, it feels very lonely, very lonely and you're not alone. You have us. Let us walk through those hard times together. You know we are that lighthouse in the storm, that light at the end of the tunnel. We are all going to get through it together because you are resilient.